Mary Ellen Sanger had made her life in Mexico for 17 years when she suddenly found herself in prison in Oaxaca, Mexico, arrested on invented charges. She spent 33 days in Ixcotel State Prison in the fall of 2003. These stories of the women she met there, illuminate her biggest surprise and her only consolation in prison: the solidarity that formed among the women she lived, ate, swept and passed long days with while inside. Nine lyrical tales show the depth of emotions that insist on their own space, even in these harshest of circumstances. The largest and brawniest woman in the prison, doing time for armed robbery, kills a rat with her foot, then turns to the author for help with a very special letter. Another young woman, only nineteen years old, has already been in for three years, guilty of kidnapping her own child. And Ana, a political prisoner, teaches the author about creative ways to turn the tide, one including frog-eating snakes. Mary Ellen weaves her own tale through the stories. Accused of a crime that doesn't exist by a powerful man in Mexico, she depends on the fierce solidarity of friends on the outside, and a brilliant lawyer who trusts in the rule of law... even in Mexico. The women incarcerated in Ixcotel State Prison said that the blackbirds chattered in the lone pomegranate tree in the courtyard whenever a woman was about to be released. They are chattering now. ________________________________ Excerpt from introduction by Elena Poniatowska: Mary Ellen's hands blister, but she never shows her wounds. Nor does she show her resulting callouses. She assembles in the courtyard and joins the circle of women who at first reject her for her blond hair and her blue eyes. She shares pistachios with them, and when she innocently tells them that she likes to write poetry but the words won't come here in the pen, Concha sends her a lifeline: "Don't worry, blondie, someday you'll write the good stuff again." ... "Blackbirds in the Pomegranate Tree" is a life lesson. If they were to throw me in jail, I would carry it with me to read each night, as some read the Bible or the Gospels. In its pages I would find strength and faith in humankind, and I would know that to believe in "the others" is a path to salvation. I suppose and believe that I am not wrong in saying that for Mary Ellen, Mexico is a woman who one day, will find herself.

In April of 2010 (National Poetry Month), we took part in the annual "Poem-a-Day" Challenge, writing during breaks at work, during lunch hours, on long subway rides, in parks in the rain or sun, in front of the 11pm news (or the 4am news), while avoiding conversations in the Laundromat, instead of doing our taxes (or because we'd just done our taxes), and so on. April soon became May became another summer and then fall and winter and finally on into another April. In 2011, we agreed to select roughly 25 poems each and put them into this book-length collection. Out of literally hundreds of poems, we have distilled this collection down to these few (many?) pages. The only rules: the poem must have been written between the two Aprils (2010 and 2011) and no editing allowed (except obvious typos). The idea is not so much to show that we are great poets (there are already enough people out there claiming that) but instead to simply show friends, family and fellow writers something we did over this past year. Themes in these poems are broad in range and yet, often repeat over the course of a month or months: Mexico, the ocean, rivers, loss, grief, love, sex, food, traffic, bridges, food, rain, injustice, food, sleep, nightmares, sex, food, Mexico, the ocean - you get the idea. Like lovers or meals or rivers, some poems are better than others. Some are only a few lines, some cover pages. What is important here is not that this is "great art" but instead that we set out to write a poem every day. And we did. We have. We still do. As we move into our second year of poem-a-day, certain themes repeat, new ones are introduced, but again, what is important is that we do this, every day (or nearly so) and we will keep doing this until we run out of things to say about Mexico, food, sex, the ocean, the world, loss, injustice, sex, chocolate, and so on. We hope you will enjoy our words as much as we have enjoyed writing them and sharing them with each other.

Every Monday at Mano a Mano, a New York center dedicated to celebrating Mexican culture, the members of NY Writers Coalition's Spanish language creative writing workshop gather to slough off the prodigious stresses of their city lives through writing. The expectation and camaraderie of the assembling group is thrilling. Though most of "Los Lunes" ("The Monday People," as they call themselves on their blog http: //loslunes.wordpress.com) have some level of bilingual skills, they choose to write in Spanish (spiced with a good dose of English and Spanglish). Mano a Mano is a safe space for them to meet and express those sentiments that may have deep roots from Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and New York, and are heart-stoppingly borderless in their humanity. Voces con Eco is a collection of poetry and prose generated in this unique collective. "The voices in Voces con Eco are small--and very large--miracles. They sing from the heart, and they write from the soul, and they engage the mind. It's important, and blessed, work. I salute them." -Luis Alberto Urrea, 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the 2004 Lannan Literary Award for The Devil's Highway "Reading Voces con Eco is like watching buds come out in spring. Lovely, heartening and more than a little awe-inspiring." -David Lida, author of First Stop in the New World and Travel Advisory